New York, New York

New York, New York

New York, it’s a Wonderful Town

By Sasha Dee

Congratulations to the Cooltan Arts. It is now mentioned in the New York Times.

This is in the connection with the recent visit to the Cooltan Arts by Siobhan Benita, the London Mayoral Candidate .

Siobhan Benita visited the Cooltan Arts to find out how Cooltan Arts is working and answer the questions by the participants of the Cooltan Arts. Cooltan Arts is an award winning organisation provides art classes and many other activites through out the year to the people who suffer from mental health issues. it is a charitable organisation. It is the only institute in the Capital of its kind.

Siobhan Benita is an Independent Candiate and contesting the Mayoral election. The London Mayor is a very recent creation in the Capital on the style of New York Mayor. Hence the Americans have good interest in the London Mayoral Election. So her visit was covered by the reporter Kabir Chibber and he wrote an extensive report about Siobhan’s political Campaign in the New York Time on 25 April 2012.

Following is the extract from the report of Mr Kabir Chibber:

“Later, in the vicinity of Elephant and Castle in south London, the CoolTan Arts Centre is down a grimy side street. The center is run by and for adults with mental health issues. Outside, in the cold, a man was slowly carving a sofa out of a single piece of wood, to be installed in a nearby park. Inside, Benita made her pitch to Sasha, one of the teachers, a soft-spoken award-winning Indian poet who wore a torn purple coat, a green tweed scarf and a duck-hunter’s hat.

CoolTan was preparing for the next of its historical walks of the area, which they call the Largactyl Shuffle. (The name is a dark joke; largactyl is an anti-psychotic drug that makes its users stumble about in a heavily sedated “shuffle.”) Lack of funding has recently forced the center to let 96 workers go. “They have to understand deprivation and that there are people who are really living on the edge,” one of the CoolTan workers told her. This campaign stop quickly became less about campaigning and more about listening. “I love that London isn’t like any other city, and here you have massive differences next to each other,” Benita said, “but there are these areas of extreme poverty that never get talked about.” Just before Benita stood to take some photos and leave, Sasha, the disheveled poet, raised his hand. “I have one last question,” he said. “After you get elected, will you still remember us?”

No other political Candidate has visited so far to the Cooltan Arts.

So naturally our support will be to the Siobhan Benita who is an energetic lady and also Independent.